We all know what practice is. We’ve all done some form of practice. Practice for the spelling test. Practice our math problems. Practice the piano. Practice baseball. Working out is a form of practice. There’s a practice for any skill you want to develop. People usually don’t like practice. They might like the event or action they’re practicing for. But most of the time practice feels like a grind, a test of will-power, grit and determination. And it seems like it’s the person that can tolerate more of the miserable grind that will excel and come out on top.
But when we think of practice, it seems what we are really talking about is process and ignoring the “play” component. Most people wouldn’t think of “play” as a component of practice. But my suggestion is rethink practice to mean process and play. if we can integrate play into our practice, practice becomes boosted, development gets accelerated, process becomes easy. Play doesn’t mean, having “fun”, easy-going or laughing through the practice. Play meaning, fully-engaged, full-present in the activity, energizing – flowstate.
Process is simply creating an underlying framework that we can “play” on. It’s having a process in place but then letting it fade into the background and letting play take over when you actually get into the practice.